We all remember our favorite novel from the 1990s -- the one where the protagonist recruits friends and navigates obstacles guarding the famed Philosopher's Stone. Wait, were you thinking about Harry Potter? No, this is actually Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone. Following the same treatment bestowed to franchises like Star Wars, the Indiana Jones intellectual property was used to create spin-off materials through the 1990s, including a strangely prolific number of novels.
After the release of the first film, a novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark hit store shelves in 1981. This trend continued with the two subsequent installments to the franchise, but after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's premiere the spin-off books shot into differing publication avenues. In 1984, Goosebumps author R.L. Stine published the first of the Indiana Jones "Find Your Fate" books, a style similar to "Choose Your Own Adventure" where readers could control the action alongside Indy. There were 11 installments in this series, though not all were written by Stine. In 1990, another set of books following the adventures of young Indiana Jones began an account of the archaeologist's formative years. Some were tied directly to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series, but many were original concepts.
Finally, after the completion of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novel, Indy creator George Lucas asked author Rob MacGregor to continue writing original stories more consistent in their characterization with Indiana Jones as seen in the films, all based on existing world myths. The first of these stories, originally published by Bantam, was released in 1991. Different writers were later brought onboard, and the last installment was published in 2009.
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The Indiana Jones Books are Wild, Wacky ... and Sometimes Don't Make Much Sense
Something to keep in mind while discussing the scores of Indy books: most of them are meant to take place before the events Raiders of the Lost Ark. This means that, should you imagine these novels to be canon to the series, Indiana has faced a hilariously large number of overtly supernatural forces before undergoing his character arc in the first film, which somehow still transformed him from skeptic to humble believer. With that in mind, let's take a look at few of Indy's wackiest adventures never put to screen.
While exploring an ancient cavern complex in MacGregor's Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy, Indy comes across evidence of a creature widely considered to be mythical: a unicorn. Go ahead and update that species' status from fictional to extinct, because apparently the unicorns were once real ... but were wiped out in the Biblical flood. Five years after this first encounter with proof of unicorns' existence, readers catch up with Indiana's adventures across the American southwest in a race to recover the unicorn's horn -- an artifact containing magical properties. This book has a bland love interest, a sequence in which Indy drinks psychedelic tea, and some out-of-left-field lore drops including giving Indiana a supposedly canon spirit animal. (It's an eagle for anyone wondering.) Albeit a forgettable book, the real bummer is not having an actual unicorn show up at any point. Go big or go home, guys.
With Andrew Helfner's Indiana Jones and the Cup of the Vampire, we've officially arrived in the fan-fiction zone, because this story is a "choose your own adventure" tale featuring you as Indy's own personal sidekick. One of many "Find Your Fate" Indiana Jones novels, this story follows your journey with Indy as you pursue the mystical Cup of Djemsheed. You control the action in a search for the goblet that grants the drinker eternal life, racing a group of occultists attempting to drown all of Europe in a curse by bringing the artifact to their leader: Prince Vlad Dracula. Yes, this truly off-the-wall inclusion makes Dracula, vampires, and werewolves all canon to the Indiana Jones universe. Honestly, though, tracking down one cup of immortality is exhausting enough. After Last Crusade and Cup of the Vampire, let's hope Indy doesn't have to chase down another one of these things later in his career.
At first glance, you'd think a book titled Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx would seem the most grounded in expectations for an Indiana Jones adventure out of the bunch. The wealth of Egyptian mythology to draw from art historical research could easily provide an engrossing, globe-trotting exploration. But if that's what readers are expecting from Max McCoy's 1999 novel, they are sorely mistaken. Indy first sets out to find an inquiring woman's magician husband, following the trail from China to Iraq to Egypt. Constantly pursued by a Japanese spymaster villain, Indy is then caught in a chase for the Biblical Staff of Aaron as well as the Omega Book: a mystical tome containing all of humanity's past, present, and future. Unlike other Indiana Jones stories that follow relatively established myths, the Omega Book is a truly wild original creation for this novel that takes the scope of the story to truly bizarre heights.
In Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs, the mystical artifact all the characters are pursuing is a triceratops. Not just an immaculately preserved fossil -- the eggs to hatch a dinosaur perhaps, as the title of McCoy's book might suggest -- but an actual triceratops. It's a common complaint that the crystal skulls were a subpar fixture for Indy's oft-ignored fourth film installment, but audiences can at least take solace in the fact that they weren't a living dinosaur. The book also draws a strange number of sequences directly from the movies including: Indy attaching himself to a traveling submarine, searching for a missing archaeologist, and fighting a crime boss in a Shanghai nightclub. It turns out that the missing historian had joined a secret tribe in the Gobi desert that hatches and raises dinosaurs, something Indy and the reader are thankfully able to witness. Indiana expectedly leaves empty-handed but not empty-minded, begging the question of why he isn't screaming from the rooftops to anyone who will listen in Raiders of the Lost Ark that there are living dinosaurs in the desert.
Indiana Jones Novels Can Be Good, Pulpy Fun
The Indiana Jones franchise has always been rooted by Spielberg and Lucas in its origins of pulp adventure serials, and there's no doubt Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold hopes to carry over that inspiration to the latest film. In a way, these novels, despite their wackiness, are sometimes more true to that source than some of the films (as evidenced by other Indy novel titles, such as Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead and Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates). In an era of entertainment where rigorous adherence to canon is paramount, it's nice to look back at a more relaxed period of goofy fun. Forget plot inconsistencies, bombshell lore drops, and a mind-boggling scope of supernatural activity. Sometimes it's just fun to hear about Indy finding the scroll of Merlin, hatching a triceratops, or clocking Dracula across the jaw. If truly bananas adventures have a name ... it's the Indiana Jones novels.
